It’s been over 3 weeks now; we hope you and your business are doing well. We are doing well and are busy supporting and helping our business clients and charity clients get through these very challenging times. Due to the current circumstance’s organisations like the Luton Food Bank have experienced an increased demand for their services and we are helping them by directing callers as to where they can get help, pick up food and donate food and money.
This crisis has highlighted the need to businesses to have back up plans in place which include virtualising your business so it can continue to operate from anywhere particularly in these uncertain time.
Do you have the resources you need to work virtually? Are you and your teams still working from your office?
Here are some tips for you so you can go virtual to allow you to work from home and also protect your staff. I expect most businesses have already done this.
1. Ask your IT department or support company to give you a remote desktop. This is your PC in the office that you access from another PC or laptop from any location with internet. This will help you and your teams work remotely and remove the need to travel to and from the office. This doesn’t take long to set up depending on your systems.
2. Using Teams on Office 365 for you and your teams. This way you can have your documents when you need them. Teams is a very good way of keeping everyone in the Team informed of any changes and requirements.
3. Outsourcing some of your business functions such as using a telephone answering service for your answer and route your calls. They are totally remote so you can be reassured your calls will be answered and messages sent to the correct person or department. They can also manage your online diary. They can do a whole host of other tasks; these are just 2 examples.
4. You can of course ask your telephone provider to divert your business number to another number which could be your mobile or home number but this could be inefficient and restricting especially if you have dogs barking and children playing in the background, but it’s a fix for the short term.
5. Zoom and other similar systems have been life savers with so many businesses using them to stay connected not only with business colleagues but also with loved ones.
6. Use a Virtual Personal Assistant for producing quotes and other documents and book-keepers and accountants can be given access to your online accounts software so they can keep everything up to date.
We hope you find these tools helpful but if you need any advice or help setting these up please contact us on 0800 0776131 or email rita.shah@telephone-answering.biz and we can try to help. If you are interested in a free trial then please let us know and we can set this up for you.
